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Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Police: Illegal immigrant sex offenders arrested


CASTLE POINT … Four immigrants … three of them in the country illegally … are facing deportation after a series of arrests and warrants by immigration agents and sheriff's deputies Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Castle Point office said.

Agents and deputies from the Putnam County Sheriff's Office began making arrests at 5:30 a.m. in Brewster, Patterson and Putnam Valley.

They arrested a Salvadoran man who was previously convicted of sexually abusing his 3-year-old son, a Guatemalan man with a previous conviction for sodomizing a 15-year-old girl and a second Guatemalan man convicted of forcibly touching an adult woman.

Authorities served a warrant on a fourth person, a Guatemalan man who is in Putnam County Jail facing a sexual misconduct charge.

Immigration officials say three of the four men are in the U.S. illegally. The arrests are part of "Operation Predator," a Homeland Security program aimed at investigating pedophiles, human traffickers and sex tourists.

In the Hudson Valley, more than 100 foreign nationals who have been convicted of sex offenses have been deported. The operation focuses on deporting legal and illegal immigrants who have been convicted, but weren't previously deported because immigration authorities didn't have the manpower to make sure they were taken out of the country.

Previously, immigration authorities focused on convicted felons who had served more than a year in state prison. Under the new program, foreign nationals convicted of lesser sex crimes are being re-arrested and deported.